When most people think of workflows they think of complicated flowcharts but we think of workflows like a checklist that can support your crisis management team during an incident. For us, each step in a workflow has a specific step before it and a specific step after it, with the exception of the first step. In a linear workflow (which is a checklist), the first step is usually initiated by an outside event i.e. an incident which results in someone having to do something. That person follows the workflow step by step until the incident comes to a close. So, here are 5 reasons why your crisis management team need workflows: Incidents don’t happen that often – Your senior leadership …

How to manage Business Continuity incidents better Every Business has a Rhythm Businesses by and large operate in steady state i.e. there is a rhythm to their normal operations that has developed over time. Manufacturers produce goods, goods are delivered to customers, customers consume those goods and in turn create further demand for manufacturers. In the background people and process support the activities of the business to ensure that the rhythm is maintained. But what if an Incident occurs? For these businesses, incidents can disrupt the rhythm of a company, disappoint customers and lead to unplanned costs. Ultimately this isn’t good for business. And because incidents come in all manner of shapes and sizes such as IT Incidents (payment systems going down for …

Summary: We were delighted to have Les Allan, Director of Safety & Security Services at Heriot-Watt University joined David McCarthy (ICR Founder & CEO) recently to discuss how he and his team leveraged ICR (crisis and incident management software) to support his people on all safety, security and emergency planning matters across several University Campuses in the UK, Dubai & Malaysia as well as over 30,000 students. Topics discussed: Les gave his thoughts on all things Crisis Management having previously relied on a paper based system to record and store their crisis management plans. Some of the topics covered included: Importance of managing information to your gold, silver & bronze teams during an incident; Managing a paper based/ manual process. Creating …

How are you trying to help in your organisation? It is important to understand what in your organisation you are trying to fix before thinking about sourcing an appropriate incident response solution. So identifying your organisation incident response needs is the first place to start: Does your organisation have a problem getting information through to the right people during an incident? Does your organisation struggle with responding to an incident in an effective manner? Do your teams constantly struggle to access up to date documents, drawings, information etc.? Once a more detailed plan has been identified, then you can start thinking about an incident response software that can help aid your organisation. Have you explored in-house options? In our experience …

Workflows, when done right can provide enormous support to your crisis management team when they are called to respond to incidents / crises. So, we’ve produced for you 10 workflow tips to support your crisis management procedures: 1. Think executive summary not “War and Peace” – Your crisis management team spend most of their time working on the business and not necessarily in the business, so when your preparing your workflows, keep it concise and to the point. 2. Make the workflow role specific – Each member of the team is expected to respond to crises as per plan. Build workflows that will support their decision-making and demonstrate compliance with the established plans. 3. K.I.S.S. – Before ICR™, I …

Part 3 – Incident Report In a previous blog we asked you ‘Are your campus incident response teams ready?’ and a flow chart guided you through questions to find out if your university or campus was rated as unprepared, moderately prepared or very prepared if an incident arouse. The final stage after looking at response is reporting, this is to enable & establish if your reporting procedures work for you or if they could be improved to provide a richer record. Reporting on key incident and crises is of paramount importance when understanding and reviewing how the incident has been handled in terms of; What went well? How improvements can be made? If corrective action needs to be taken? Investigate …

In the last few months’ campuses around the globe have been subjected to bomb threats, arson attacks, racially aggravated incidents, lone shooter incidents, as well as cyber-attacks – the list goes on and on. Some institutions have responded well, communicated clearly, having dealt with the incident appropriately and efficiently, thus reinforcing their reputation within the education sector. Others, less so and their reputation could suffer irreparable damage as a result. The safety of students and institution reputation go hand in hand It’s easy in both a professional capacity and daily life capacity to adopt an ‘it won’t happen to us’ attitude but no one is safe from the dangers schools face in this modern world. If you think that these …

Are Your Team’s Incident Response Ready? In our last blog we asked you ‘How would you rate the readiness of your campus to handle incidents’ and a flow chart guided you through questions to find out if your university was rated as unprepared, moderately prepared or very prepared. The next stage after looking at readiness is to look into incident response, to establish if plans and processes are in place to aid or hinder response. Take our test today and find out how your campus rates for incident response: Did you score A or B – ICR: Campus Incident Control™ can help: ICR™’s user friendly mobile applications ensures your team have everything they need, when they are …

Preparation is key when it comes to being ‘incident ready’ on campus. In our experience the campuses that handle incidents best are the ones that not only have plans in place but also utilise the latest technology to drive their plans forward. Is your Campus Incident Ready? Find out where your organisation ranks in its readiness to handle incidents via our Readiness Flow Chart: Did you score A or B – ICR: Campus Incident Control™ can help: Incidentcontrolroom.com® (ICR™) enhances the readiness of your organisation and allows you to retain full control of your system through a sophisticated and highly flexible permission controlled system that can be modelled on your organisational structure. Build, maintain & deploy incident management …

In last week’s blog Preventing and Handling False Alarms on Campus – Part 1 we discussed the most common types of incidents, and also which incident type caused Universities the most problems. From our research False Alarm Activation came up time and time again, the blog then went on to give our top tips for preventing false alarms. This blog takes this a step further looking at how best to handle and manage false alarms when they do occur causing minimum impact on the day to day running of your University or College. Here are our Top 5 Tips for False Alarm Management #1 – Formulate plans and procedures ICR: Campus Incident Control™ provides First Responders with accessibility to alarm …